Pone.0263217 - Establishing The Content of Gender

PLOS ONE
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Establishing the content of gender

stereotypes across development
Jessica Sullivan ID1*, Angela Ciociolo ID2, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin1
1 Department of Psychology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, United States of America,
2 Angela Ciociolo Marketing and Design, Grafton, Massachusetts, United States of America
* [email protected]
a1111111111 Abstract
a1111111111
a1111111111 Gender stereotypes shape individuals’ behaviors, expectations, and perceptions of others.
a1111111111 However, little is known about the content of gender stereotypes about people of different
a1111111111 ages (e.g., do gender stereotypes about 1-year-olds differ from those about older individu-
als?). In our pre-registered study, 4,598 adults rated either the typicality of characteristics
(to assess descriptive stereotypes), or the desirability of characteristics (to assess prescrip-
tive and proscriptive stereotypes) for targets who differed in gender and age. Between-sub-
OPEN ACCESS jects, we manipulated target gender (boy/man vs. girl/woman) and target age (1, 4, 7, 10,
Citation: Sullivan J, Ciociolo A, Moss-Racusin CA 13, 16, or 35). From this, we generated a normed list of descriptive, prescriptive, and pro-
(2022) Establishing the content of gender scriptive gender-stereotyped characteristics about people across the early developmental
stereotypes across development. PLoS ONE 17(7):
timespan. We make this archive, as well as our raw data, available to other researchers. We
e0263217. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.
pone.0263217 also present preliminary findings, demonstrating that some characteristics are consistently
ungendered (e.g., challenges authority), others are gender-stereotypic across the early
Editor: Alexander N. Sokolov, Eberhard-Karls-
Universitat Tubingen Medizinische Fakultat, developmental timespan (e.g., males from age 1 to 35 tend to be dirty), and still others
GERMANY change over development (e.g., girls should be submissive, but only around age 10). Impli-
Received: August 11, 2020 cations for gender stereotyping theory—as well as targets of gender stereotyping, across
the lifespan—are discussed.
Accepted: January 14, 2022
Published: July 12, 2022
Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the

benefits of transparency in the peer review
process; therefore, we enable the publication of
all of the content of peer review and author Introduction
responses alongside final, published articles. The Gender plays an important role in daily life. While beliefs about gender differ within and
editorial history of this article is available here:
across cultures [1]. Within particular cultures, there are often gender stereotypes (e.g., behav-
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263217
iors, characteristics, or attributes) that are deemed to be more normative and/or desirable for
Copyright: © 2022 Sullivan et al. This is an open one gender than another [1, 2]. Adults in the United States who violate gender stereotypes
access article distributed under the terms of the
often experience social and/or economic penalties, commonly referred to as backlash [3–12].
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
For example, women who violate stereotypes by self-promoting on a job interview are less
reproduction in any medium, provided the original likely to be hired than identical men, while men who violate stereotypes by being self-effacing
author and source are credited. were less likely to be hired than identical women [8].
Data Availability Statement: Data area available
While the vast majority of existing work explores backlash against adults, recent research
on our OSF page: https://osf.io/6r4ce/?view_only= provided the first evidence that even gender-deviant children (in this case, preschoolers) expe-
d9c59e1237e045c2be571abd94b711b6. rience backlash [13]: adults report liking gender non-conforming 3-year-olds less than their
PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263217 July 12, 2022 1 / 19

PLOS ONE Development of gender stereotypes
Funding: The authors received no specific funding gender-conforming peers. This suggests that gender stereotypes have real-world consequences
for this work. for adults and children alike. And yet, virtually nothing is known about how gender stereo-
Competing interests: The authors have declared types change over development. Are stereotypic beliefs and expectations about young children
that no competing interests exist. the same as those about older children, adolescents, and adults? Are some traits consistently
gendered across the lifespan, while others fluctuate? If they fluctuate, in what patterns? The
present study investigates these questions, providing a novel assessment of how gender stereo-
types change across the early developmental timespan.
Prior research demonstrates that, on average, adults in the United States believe that
women should be communal (e.g., warm, supportive) and should not be dominant (e.g.,
aggressive, self-promoting); in contrast, men should be agentic (e.g., ambitious, independent)
and should not be weak (e.g., passive, emotional) [12]. Violations of these gender stereotypes
lead to backlash for adults in the U.S. (see [12] for a discussion). While the vast majority of
empirical research on backlash has been conducted with participants in the United States, the
limited data collected with participants in other countries including Australia [14], France
[15], India [16], and China [17] reveal largely similar patterns (although more cross-cultural
work is badly needed; see [18] for review).
Given the current data, it is unclear whether children in the United States, e.g., 1-year-old
boys and girls, are held by adults to the same standards. Are they? If not, when in a child’s
development do adults begin to apply gender stereotypes? Are there previously undocumented
gender-stereotypes that apply only in childhood? More broadly, do gender stereotypes remain
stable as children age, or do they fluctuate across development? In the present study, we asked
adults to make judgments about the typicality and desirability of a large number of characteris-
tics for targets of a wide variety of ages. This allowed us to characterize not only the presence
or absence of a particular gender stereotype but also the developmental trajectories of these
stereotypes.
In general, there are three types of gender stereotypes, each of which we measured in our
study. Descriptive stereotypes involve characteristics that are thought to be typical of a particu-
lar gender [19]. For example, women in the United States are typically viewed as more self-
aware and more anxious than men, while men are typically viewed as more extroverted and
forgetful than women [2]. While individuals who violate descriptive stereotypes may surprise
others, these individuals generally do not encounter backlash [19]. However, the same is not
true for individuals who violate prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes. Prescriptive stereo-
types describe how members of a particular gender should behave. For example, women
should be communal (e.g., cheerful, patient, and interested in children), while men should be
agentic (e.g., athletic, ambitious, and assertive; [2, 12]). Proscriptive stereotypes are those that
describe how members of a particular gender should not behave. For example, women should
not be dominant (e.g., stubborn or rebellious), while men should not be weak (e.g., emotional
or yielding; [2, 12]). Of importance, people who violate prescriptive and proscriptive stereo-
types typically encounter social and economic penalties (i.e. backlash; [12, 20]).
A large body of work has sought to characterize the content of descriptive, prescriptive, and
proscriptive stereotypes about adult men and women. For example, Social Role Theory [21,
22] posits that stereotypes about men and women stem directly from the sex-differentiated
social roles traditionally occupied by men relative to women. Due to biological predispositions
in early evolutionary history, men were more likely to be hunters, and women gatherers. Over
time, people ascribed role-consistent traits to men and women, and these stereotypes took on
prescriptive as well as descriptive components. However, because children are not yet capable
of occupying these adult roles, it is unclear how, when, and why gender stereotypes should be
applied to them. Relatedly, the stereotype content model proposes that stereotypes about adults
cluster around two core dimensions: competence and warmth [18, 23, 24]. People who are

viewed as high in warmth and low in competence (e.g., elderly people, housewives) elicit pater-
nalistic stereotypes because they are perceived as low-status and non-competitive [24]. In con-
trast, targets who are viewed as low in warmth and high in competence (e.g., feminists,
wealthy people) are met with stereotypes characterized by envy. Indeed, according to the ste-
reotype content model, one reason that stereotype-violating women encounter backlash is that
they are perceived as both high-status and competitive and therefore threaten the existing
power structure. A potential challenge for this model—and one motivation for creating the
current database of gender stereotypes about targets across the lifespan—is that children, by
virtue of their relative lack of power, are economically, physically and socially powerless (rela-
tive to adults) and therefore are rarely thought of as threatening to the existing social order.
Why, then should they experience backlash? More generally, it’s not obvious that competence
and warmth are the appropriate domains for characterizing children. In short, neither theory
nor empirical data suggest that gender stereotypes about children and adults are necessarily
identical or even similar.
In fact, the recent work that has attempted to characterize adults’ gender stereotypes about
children [13, 25] has found that gender stereotypes about children appear to differ—at least in
some ways—from those about adults. One recent study found that gender stereotypes about
appearance, toy preference, and communality may be present for toddlers but that many other
types of stereotypes that apply to adults may not apply to young children [25]. For example,
although adult men and elderly men are described as more intelligent than women, toddler
girls and elementary-aged girls are described as more intelligent than boys [25]. This study
provides an exciting and promising window into understanding how gender stereotypes differ
across the lifespan; however, because it elicited ratings only for developmental categories (e.g.,
“adolescents (ages 12–18)”), it does not allow us to draw conclusions about developmental tra-
jectories. Another recent study found that the gender stereotypes that apply to 3-year-old chil-
dren are often meaningfully different from those that apply to adults: unlike for adults, traits
that were rated as most typical for boys were rated as undesirable, and stereotypes about chil-
dren were more likely to center around appearance than is typical for adults [13]. However, it
is not possible to know whether some of these apparent developmental differences can be
attributed to changes in gender stereotypes across the developmental timecourse, or whether
they can instead be attributed to methodological differences across studies (e.g., in the stereo-
types tested; in sample size; c.f. [25] which addresses some of these issues). More generally,
these studies provide a promising starting point but do not provide a large dataset for future
researchers to utilize and do not allow us to characterize the developmental trajectory of gen-
der stereotypes.
Our study—which will catalogue gender stereotypes across development (e.g., ages 1–35)—
is consequential for at least four reasons. First, in order for our general theories of gender ste-
reotyping (e.g., Social Role Theory (e.g., [21, 22]) and the Stereotype Content Model [23, 24])
to be useful for understanding and predicting children’s learning about gender stereotypes,
they must fit the data not only for adults but also for children. Second, in order to effectively
study and predict gender backlash [13, 26], it is critical that we first understand the stereotypes
that underlie backlash. Third, most theoretical approaches assume that gender stereotypes are
learned; this implies that stereotypes could and should change over development, although
there is very little data to speak to this. Fourth, from a practical perspective, adults interact
with others (including children) throughout the early developmental timespan; parents, educa-
tors, and policy-makers would do well to understand the nature of the gender stereotypes that
might be guiding their interactions. While evidence does suggest that people appear to
encounter backlash for violating gender stereotypes across adulthood and childhood alike
(e.g., [13]), for most ages research has done little to identify what these childhood gender

stereotypes—and thus, their violations—even are. While we know that backlash exists, the
nature of childhood gender stereotypes remain unclear, so we cannot yet predict the circum-
stances under which it is likely to occur across the lifespan.
In the present study, we measured adults’ gender stereotypes about infants (age one), chil-
dren (ages 4, 7 and 10), adolescents (age 16), and adults (age 35). To do this, we measured gen-
dered stereotypes about targets that ranged in age from 1 to 35. We present a database of
normed gender stereotypes along with pre-registered findings generated by this study. This
database fills a critical gap in the literature and will provide a set of developmental norms for
researchers interested in gender development, gender backlash, and gender stereotypes.
Method
All materials, methods, and analyses were approved via Skidmore College’s IRB, and pre-regis-
tered (https://osf.io/7ahks).
Participants
Our target sample size pre-exclusions was 4,900, which we requested via TurkPrime [27]; this
number was selected in order to ensure that we had approximately 100 participants per cell of
our design. Participants were native English speakers who were aged 18+, who had at least a
97% approval rating for prior Mechanical Turk HITs, and who had between 100–10,000 HITs.
In total, 5,260 participants consented. We did not collect demographic data from our partici-
pants and therefore cannot assess the extent to which they are representative of the general
population of the United States. Consistent with our pre-registration, we excluded participants
who failed to complete at least 80% of the questions (n = 308), and who failed any attention
check (n = 354). This resulted in a final N of 4,598.
Design. The current study utilized a 2 [target gender: male, female] x 2 [rating type: pre/
proscriptive, descriptive] x 7 [target age: 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 35] between-subjects design. This is
in contrast to previous work that has manipulated these factors within-subjects [25]. In addi-
tion, our use of particular ages (e.g., “seven-year-old”) contrasts with that in previous work,
which has elicited clusters of ratings (e.g., “elementary-school boys”; [25]).
We randomly assigned participants to conditions and to items within conditions. There
were 175 characteristics and five attention checks, and participants were randomly assigned to
see approximately 60% of the items. For each condition (e.g., for ratings of the desirability of
characteristics for one-year-old boys), we obtained an average of 160 usable participants
(min = 137, max = 187). For each characteristic (e.g., “pretty”), we obtained an average of 102
ratings per cell.
Materials and procedure

Our bank of characteristics consisted of 175 unique items from previous work [2, 12, 13, 28].
These included behaviors (e.g., wrestles), traits (e.g., pretty), preferences (e.g., loves pink), and
appearance-related items (e.g., wears tutus).
Participants first viewed instructions as follows: “Today you will be answering questions
about how [common or typical / desirable] you think particular traits are among [age] [boys/
girls/men/women]”. For example, participants in one condition saw: “Today you will be
answering questions about how [common or typical/desirable] you think particular traits are
among 1-year-old boys”.
Participants then rated each characteristic on a 1–9 Likert-Style scale with 1 indicating “not
at all X” (where X was either “desirable” or “common/typical”) and 9 indicating “very X”; 5
was labeled as “Neutral.” They were reminded of the instructions: “Indicate how typical/

desirable it is in American society for [age, gender] to possess each of the following characteris-
tics. [Scale = 1–9; 1 = Not at all Typical/Desirable; 9 = Very Typical/Desirable]”. Characteris-
tics were randomly ordered and randomly sampled from the body of possible characteristics
described above. After rating each characteristic, we collected participants’ ages and genders.
Results
As pre-registered (and as noted above), we excluded participants who were unlikely to be
attending to the task by not answering enough questions or by incorrectly completing compre-
hension checks. We also excluded from analyses two items that were mistakenly included in
our battery: “doesn’t wait his turn” (since it accidentally included a gendered pronoun) and “is
clean” (since we also had the item “clean”).
Two primary goals of the current work were to develop a database of gender stereotypes
across the developmental early timespan and to provide these data to other researchers. To this
end, our data are available on our OSF page (https://osf.io/9pgkd/).
We had three additional specific goals, each of which was pre-registered: (1) to identify
items that were and weren’t consistently gendered across the early developmental timespan
(e.g., to find a list of gender stereotypes that characterize girls and women throughout develop-
ment); (2) to identify items for which stereotypes changed over the early developmental time-
span (e.g., items that are stereotypical at young ages but not at older ages); and (3) to identify
items for which there were stereotypes at particular ages (e.g., to find a list of all gender stereo-
types for 1-year-olds).
As pre-registered, we constructed linear models that predicted ratings for each characteris-
tic from target gender (boy/girl), age (continuous), and their interaction. This allowed us to
identify items where gender interacted with age (indicating that the presence and/or nature of
the gender stereotype changed over development; these data are discussed later) and also items
that were consistently gendered (i.e. there was no interaction with age, but rather a simple
effect of gender).
Items that were not gender-stereotyped

We first report items for which we found no effect of target gender and no interaction of gen-
der and age. In other words, these were the items for which—when considering the entirety of
our dataset—we had no evidence, at any age, of gender stereotyping. For ratings of typicality,
29/175 (16.6%) characteristics that showed no effect of gender are depicted in Table 1. For rat-
ings of desirability, 59/175 characteristics (33.71%) showed no effect of gender as depicted in
Table 1. Characteristics showing no effect of gender in ratings of typicality.

Characteristics
Acts as a leader Demanding Materialistic
Ambitious Determined Rational
Analytical Extroverted Self-centered
Argues with parents Hard-working Self-sufficient
Assertive Has a strong personality Stubborn
Bratty Has business sense Typical
Brave Independent Uncertain
Childlike Is a leader Weak
Decisive Is frequently sick Willing to take a stand
Defends own beliefs Loyal
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263217.t001

Table 2. Characteristics showing no effect of gender in ratings of desirability.

Characteristics
Anxious Good listener Rational
Argues with parents Has good manners Refuses to pick up toys
Arrogant Helpful Ruthless
a
Bossy Helps out around the house Satisfied with life
Bratty Humble Self-centered
Challenges authoritya Interrupts others Self-critical
Choosy Is frequently sick Slobbers
Cold towards others Lazy Spiritual
Competent Likeable Stingy
Complicated Loyal Stubborn
Controlling Materialistica Supportive
Cooperative Moody Thinks it’s funny when other kids are crying
Cynical Nosy
Disobedient Obedient Uncertain
Does not use harsh language Open minded Unemotional
Enthusiastic Persuasive Waits turn
Excitable Picky eater Was an easy baby
Frequently has a runny nose Polite Well-behaved
Friendly Prejudiced Wholesome
Gets pushed around by other kids Pulls other kids’ hair Yielding
Note
a
Despite the lack of overall effects of gender, characteristic showed a pairwise difference at least one age.
Table 2. In other words, there is no evidence that these 29 traits constitute descriptive gender
stereotypes (Table 1), or that these 59 traits constitute prescriptive or proscriptive gender ste-
reotypes (Table 2).
Stereotypes that were consistent across development

Ratings of typicality (i.e., Descriptive stereotypes). We first considered items for which
we found a simple effect of target gender (For brevity, we do not report main effects of age in
the main paper, although readers may access our data in our repository (https://osf.io/9pgkd/);
items described here with a main effect of gender may also have shown main effects of age;
only those items for which (a) there was an age� gender interaction (discussed later) or (b) no
main effect of gender are excluded from the reporting below.). Our preliminary analysis
revealed 93 items for which there was a simple effect of target gender (and no interaction with
age) on ratings of typicality. In other words, ratings of typicality for these items differed
depending on whether the target was a boy or a girl, and this gender difference did not depend
on target age. As pre-registered, we identified the items for which the Cohen’s d effect size of
the comparison of ratings for boys vs. girls was larger than 0.4; this is in keeping with past
work [2, 13]. This yielded 25 stereotypes about typicality that persisted across the developmen-
tal timeline; 15 of these met our pre-registered criteria for being descriptive stereotypes (effect
size larger than 0.4 and a mean typicality above 6), while 10 did not (these met our effect size
criteria but not the mean rating criteria and therefore were simply relatively more common for
one gender than the other; we thus refer to them as “more typical” rather than “descriptive”).
These are displayed in Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3. Characteristics rated as consistently more typical in boys/men than girls/women across the lifespan.
Characteristic M (male) M (female) Classification for boys/men Cohen’s d
Rowdy 6.54 5.11 Descriptive 0.74
Willing to take risks 6.65 5.79 Descriptive 0.46
Competitive 6.60 5.87 Descriptive 0.40
a
Handsome 5.79 3.82 More typical 0.97
Dirtyb 5.74 3.88 More typical 0.90
Aggressive 5.43 4.30 More typical 0.58
Sometimes hits others 5.52 4.50 More typical 0.48
Has bruised knees 5.64 4.72 More typical 0.41
Note. All traits included here are ones for which the Cohen’s d effect size comparing ratings for boys/men vs. girls/women was larger than 0.4. Traits classified as
descriptive demonstrated a mean typicality rating for boys/men above 6, while those classified as more typical demonstrated a mean below 6.
a
Characteristic is also a prescription for boys (see Table 5).
b
Characteristic is also a proscription for girls (see Table 5).
Ratings of desirability (i.e., Prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes)

Our preliminary analysis also revealed 85 items that showed a simple effect of gender for rat-
ings of desirability. In other words, these items were rated as consistently more desirable for
one gender than the other, and this gender difference did not depend on target age. Of these,
12 met our threshold for effect size (Table 5). We found 4 items that were prescriptive for
boys/men and 2 for girls/women; these were the characteristics for which there was an effect
size of at least 0.4 and a desirability rating above 6. We also found 2 items that were more
Table 4. Characteristics rated as consistently more typical for girls/women than boys/men across the lifespan.
Characteristic M (male) M (female) Classification for girls/women Cohen’s d
Enjoys wearing skirts and dresses 2.23 6.35 Descriptive 2.28
Loves pink 2.70 6.18 Descriptive 1.89
Pretty 3.86 6.59 Descriptive 1.43
Gentle 4.74 6.07 Descriptive 0.76
Tendera 4.86 6.05 Descriptive 0.66
Affectionate 5.52 6.51 Descriptive 0.55
Pays attention to appearances 4.82 6.14 Descriptive 0.55
Loves children 5.09 6.10 Descriptive 0.53
Sweet 5.51 6.41 Descriptive 0.52
Warm 5.48 6.34 Descriptive 0.52
Caring 5.53 6.33 Descriptive 0.48
Flatterable 5.41 6.21 Descriptive 0.40
Gracefula 3.59 5.22 More typical 0.88
Clean 4.33 5.82 More typical 0.76
Helps mom bake 3.91 5.39 More typical 0.66
Fragileb 4.54 5.52 More typical 0.46
Enjoys cooking 3.86 4.84 More typical 0.46
Note. All traits included here are ones for which the Cohen’s d effect size comparing ratings for girls/women vs. boys/men was larger than 0.4. Traits classified as
descriptive demonstrated a mean typicality rating for girls/women above 6, while those classified as more typical demonstrated a mean below 6.
a
Characteristic is also a prescription for girls (see Table 5).
b
Characteristic is also a proscription for boys (see Table 5).

Table 5. Characteristics that were consistently rated as more desirable for one gender than the other.
Characteristic M (male) M (female) Classification Gender Cohen’s d
Handsomea 6.92 4.59 Prescription Boys/men 1.12
Likes to play with tools 6.50 4.97 Prescription Boys/men 0.82
Loves sports 6.72 5.56 Prescription Boys/men 0.67
Athletic 6.96 6.11 Prescription Boys/men 0.48
Has a big appetite 5.91 4.76 More desirable Boys/men 0.64
Loves to get dirty 5.76 4.63 More desirable Boys/men 0.54
Fragileb 2.82 3.84 Proscription Boys/men 0.52
Gracefulb 5.49 6.90 Prescription Girls/women 0.77
Tenderb 5.85 6.68 Prescription Girls/women 0.44
Soft spoken 4.78 5.55 More desirable Girls/women 0.41
Dirtya 3.29 2.39 Proscription Girls/women 0.45
Has unbrushed hair 4.02 3.22 Proscription Girls/women 0.40
Note. All traits included here are ones for which the Cohen’s d effect size comparing ratings for girls/women vs. boys/men was larger than 0.4. Traits classified as
prescriptive demonstrated a mean desirability rating above 6, while those classified as proscriptive demonstrated a mean below 4. Items that met our effect size criteria
but that displayed means above 4 and below 6 are described as “more desirable” for a particular gender.
a
Characteristics that were also rated as descriptive/more typical for boys (see Table 3).
b
Characteristics that were also rated as descriptive/more typical for girls (see Table 4).
desirable for boys/men and 1 for girls/women (n = 1); these characteristics met our threshold
for effect size but were neither rated as especially desirable (rating above 6) or undesirable (rat-
ing below 4); we refer to these as “more desirable” rather than “prescriptive.” Finally, we found
traits that were proscriptive for girls/women (n = 2), and traits that were proscriptive for boys/
men (n = 1); these characteristics met our threshold for effect size and had a mean desirability
rating below 4.
In our previous work, we demonstrated that characteristics descriptive of 3-year-old boys
also tended to be rated as undesirable (i.e., below the midpoint of our 9-point desirability
scale), while the opposite was true for 3-year-olds girls [13]. We extend this finding in the pres-
ent dataset; the mean desirability rating for the desirable characteristics in Table 5 for boys was
4.29 (i.e., undesirable), while it was 6.08 (i.e. desirable) for girls; these values differed signifi-
cantly (p = .003). These data suggest that the characteristics that describe boys/men are rated
as less desirable than those that describe girls/women (and, in fact, are rated as undesirable)
across the lifespan. Further, we highlight that there were noticeably fewer traits viewed as con-
sistently typical for boys/men (8) than for girls/women (17).
Stereotypes that change over development

We next consider the characteristics for which we found a significant gender by age interac-
tion. These were the items for which the magnitude of the gender gap changed across the
developmental timeline—in other words, traits that are gender stereotypic, but as a function of
target age. We found 43 characteristics where gender differences in ratings of typicality inter-
acted with age (Table 6) and 22 characteristics where gender differences in ratings of desirabil-
ity interacted with age (Table 7).
Our next goal was to understand the nature of these interactions. To do this, as pre-regis-
tered, we visualized each interaction. We then exploratorily qualitatively clustered characteris-
tics based on shared developmental patterns. To do this, the lead author clustered the
visualizations (see Fig 1) based on visual similarity, and the other two authors checked the

Table 6. Characteristics for which gender differences in ratings of typicality interacted with age.
Cluster classification and included characteristics Gender more typical
Childhood gender differences
Likes superheroes� Boys/men
Pretend to be a soldier� Boys/men
�
Likes princesses Girls/women
Likes to play with dolls� Girls/women
Wears Tutus� Girls/women
Adolescent gender differences—boost
Has a big appetite Boys/men
Has unbrushed hair Boys/men
Smelly Boys/men
Emotional� Girls/women
Anxious Girls/women
Cries often Girls/women
Melodramatic Girls/women
Moody Girls/women
Pays attention to what other people are wearing Girls/women
Self-critical Girls/women
Adolescent gender differences—reduction
Likes to play outside Girls/women
Wears clothes that don’t match Girls/women
Likes to be held� Girls/women
Choosy Girls/women
Snuggly Girls/women
Fluctuating gender differences
Comforts other children when they are crying Girls/women
Compassionate Girls/women
Eager to soothe hurt feelings Girls/women
Good listener Girls/women
Helps out around the house Girls/women
Sensitive to the needs of others Girls/women
Sympathetic Girls/women
Cluster classification and included characteristics Gender more typical
Fluctuating gender differences
Understanding Girls/women
Direction switches
Is submissive� Direction switches
Spiritual Direction switches
Stingy Direction switches
Differences emerge late
Childlike Boys/men
Strong Boys/men
Persistent gender differences
Masculine� Boys/men
Likes to play with tools Boys/men
Loves to get dirty Boys/men
Feminine� Girls/women
Likes to wear nail polish� Girls/women
(Continued )

Table 6. (Continued)
Unclassified
Sensitive� N/A
Steals toys� Boys/men
Intimidating Boys/men
Is easily frightened Girls/women
Messy N/A
Strong N/A
Unemotional Boys/men
Note. Asterisks indicate that characteristic also had a pre/proscriptive interaction (see Table 7).
clustering. Due to the subjective and qualitative nature of this classification process, the result-
ing clusters should be interpreted as useful ways of digesting our otherwise exceptionally dense
dataset, and as helpful jumping-off points for future research. Fig 1 defines and depicts each
cluster. Every characteristic and its cluster are depicted in Tables 6 (for ratings of typicality)
and 7 (ratings of desirability).
Table 7. Characteristics for which gender differences in ratings of desirability interacted with age.
Classification and included characteristics Gender more desirable
Childhood gender differences
Plays with trucks Boys/men
Likes superheroes� Boys/men
Pretend to be a soldier� Boys/men
Steals toys� Boys/men
�
Likes to play with dolls Girls/women
Sensitive� Girls/women
Differences emerge late
Ambitious Boys/men
Adorable Girls/women
Flatterable Girls/women
Is submissive� Girls/women
Likes to be held� Girls/women
Persistent gender effects
Masculine� Boys/men
Enjoys wearing skirts and dresses Girls/women
Loves pink Girls/women
Pretty Girls/women
Feminine� Girls/women
Likes princesses� Girls/women
Likes to wear nail polish� Girls/women
�
Wears Tutus Girls/women
Unclassified
Demanding N/A
Dominant N/A
Emotional� N/A
Note. Asterisks indicate that characteristic also had a descriptive interaction (see Table 6).

Fig 1. Observed clusters and their patterns.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263217.g001

Stereotypes at each age

As pre-registered, for each age, we classified each item according to whether it met the criteria
for being a descriptive (mean rating of at least 6 for one gender, effect size of at least .4 for the
difference in ratings for boys/men vs. girls/women), prescriptive (mean rating of at least 6 for
one gender, effect size of at least .4 for the difference in ratings for boys/men vs. girls/women),
or proscriptive stereotype (mean rating of less than 4 for one gender, effect size of at least .4 for
the difference in ratings for boys/men vs. girls/women). We did this for every item whether or
not there was a significant interaction of age and gender in the analyses above; this was because
we decided, a priori, that it was important to identify individual stereotypes at each age. Of
course, as with all situations with such a large number of comparisons, even though our
threshold was not statistical significance, we encourage readers to be cautious in interpreting
each particular effect as it is likely that some of these effects emerged by chance alone.
This process of classification had three main outcomes. First, we assessed how many char-
acteristics were classified as gender stereotypes at each age (see Fig 2). Interestingly, stereotypes
were most frequent between the ages of 7 and 16, peaking at age 10. While the rate of prescrip-
tive stereotypes appeared approximately the same across the developmental timespan, pro-
scriptive and descriptive stereotypes were most frequent during childhood in our dataset. In
other words, for female targets, there were more stereotypes applied to 7-year-olds than to
adults, to 10-year-olds than to adults, to 13-year-olds than to adults, and to 16-year-olds than
to adults. This is particularly striking because much of the existing research has focused on
understanding gender stereotypes only about adults.
Next, we explored whether there were more de-, pre-, or pro-scriptions for boys/men rela-
tive to girls/women and whether the frequencies of these stereotypes changed over the early
Fig 2. Number of characteristics classified as gender stereotypes at each age by type of stereotype. Notes. Y-axis is a count of stereotypes that
met our pre-registered stereotype threshold. Black indicates prescriptive stereotypes, dark gray indicates proscriptions, and light gray indicates
descriptive stereotypes. Note that some characteristics are double-counted (e.g., if an item was a descriptive and prescriptive stereotype at a
particular age, it contributes to both the descriptive count and the prescriptive count). These data suggest that gender stereotypes are prevalent
across the developmental timeline, and that children—not adults—may be subject to the most gender stereotypes.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263217.g002

Table 8. Characteristics that were rated as descriptive of one-year-old children.

Characteristic M (girl) M (boy) d Gender Other Ages
4 7 10 13 16 35
Plays with trucksa 4.43 6.77 1.13 Boys x x x
Handsomea 4.00 6.00 0.83 Boys x
d
Dirty 5.28 6.21 0.42 Boys x x x
Likes princessesb,c 6.36 3.63 1.32 Girls x x x
Prettyb 6.84 4.98 0.90 Girls x x x x x x
Likes to play with dollsb 6.28 4.54 0.86 Girls x x
Does not use harsh language 7.65 6.42 0.48 Girls x x
Note. “Other ages” column indicates the other target ages (4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 35) for which this characteristic was also descriptive.
a
Characteristic was also a prescription for boys (see Table 9).
b
Characteristic was also a prescription for girls (see Table 9).
c
Characteristic was also a proscription for boys (see Table 9).
d
Characteristic was also a proscription for girls (see Table 9).
developmental timespan (Table 9). We found that a larger proportion of descriptive stereo-
types were about girls/women (65.4%) than about boys/men (34.6%; p < .0001). A larger pro-
portion of proscriptive stereotypes were about boys/men (72.3%; p < .0001) than about girls/
women (27.7%); there were no effects of age on the distribution of stereotypes in either of
these cases (all p>.10). Interestingly, this gendered asymmetry did not emerge for prescriptive
stereotypes, which were equally frequent for boys/men (49.6%) and girls/women (50.4%, p =
.93). Again, there were no effects of age on the gendered distribution of these stereotypes.
These data suggest that while girls/women may consistently be subject to a relatively higher
proportion of descriptive stereotypes, boys/men are subject to a higher proportion of proscrip-
tive stereotypes throughout the lifespan.
The final outcome is a table of all items that meet the criteria for being de-, pre-, or pro-
scriptive at each age range. These are available in our repository. To illustrate these findings
for one age group, in Tables 8 and 9, we pull out all descriptive (Table 8) and prescriptive
(Table 9) stereotypes for one-year-olds.
Discussion
In the present study, we measured adults’ stereotypes about male and female targets across the
early developmental timespan (i.e. from infancy through early adulthood). To do this, we pre-
sented over 4,000 adults with a list of characteristics and asked them to rate either the desirabil-
ity or typicality of those characteristics. Critically, participants rated the characteristics for
targets that were either male or female and that were either 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, or 35-years-old.
This allowed us to develop the largest known normed database of gender stereotypes and to
shed light on several questions about how descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive gender
stereotypes change across the developmental timeline.
Rather than demonstrating stable stereotypic expectations for boys, girls, men, and women
throughout the lifespan, our data revealed numerous developmental trends in the nature of
gender stereotypes. First, items that were consistently gendered (main effects) were very rare;
less than 10% of our items were consistently rated as being descriptive or pre/pro-scriptive ste-
reotypes. Further, 29 characteristics were never descriptive of either gender, and 59 were never
pre/pro-scriptive of either gender. These data suggest that theories of gender stereotypes need
to take into account the fact that stereotypes are applied differently to targets of different ages

Table 9. Characteristics that were rated as prescriptive/proscriptive of one-year-old children.

Characteristic M (girl) M (boy) Effect size Classification Other ages where effect was found
4 7 10 13 16 35
Masculine 3.06 6.01 1.48 Prescriptive of Boys; Proscriptive of Girls x x x x x x
Handsome� 4.36 6.79 1.19 Prescriptive of Boys x x x x x x
�
Plays with trucks 4.77 6.51 0.96 Prescriptive of Boys x x x
Likes to play with tools 4.98 6.54 0.80 Prescriptive of Boys x x x x x
Athletic 4.90 6.22 0.61 Prescriptive of Boys x x x
Loves sports 5.11 6.16 0.56 Prescriptive of Boys x x x x x x
Likes superheroes 5.36 6.40 0.53 Prescriptive of Boys x x x
Strong personality 5.66 6.51 0.44 Prescriptive of Boys
Enjoys wearing skirts and dresses 6.27 2.82 1.71 Prescriptive of Girls; Proscriptive of Boys x x x x x x
Feminine 6.28 2.99 1.71 Prescriptive of Girls; Proscriptive of Boys x x x x x x
�
Likes princesses 6.21 3.80 1.20 Prescriptive of Girls; Proscriptive of Boys x x x x x x
Likes to play with dolls� 6.58 4.06 1.25 Prescriptive of Girls x x x x x
Pretty� 6.83 4.61 1.08 Prescriptive of Girls x x x x x x
Graceful 6.76 5.51 0.69 Prescriptive of Girls x x x x x x
Sensitive 6.17 5.31 0.43 Prescriptive of Girls x
Characteristic M (girl) M (boy) Effect size Classification Other ages where effect was found
4 7 10 13 16 35
Likes to wear nail polish 4.84 2.85 0.99 Proscriptive of Boys x x x x x x
Wears Tutus 5.30 3.34 0.96 Proscriptive of Boys x x x x x
Loves pink 5.66 3.87 0.86 Proscriptive of Boys x x x x
Dirty� 2.56 3.54 0.47 Proscriptive of Girls x x x x
Challenges authority 3.12 4.07 0.41 Proscriptive of Girls
Note. “Other ages” column indicates the other target ages (4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 35) for which this characteristic was also descriptive.
�
Characteristic was also a description for that age and gender (see Table 8).
—an idea that has not received significant attention in the literature thus far (to our
knowledge).
The existence of a sizable subset of ungendered characteristics suggests that demand char-
acteristics were unlikely to be responsible for our findings. In interpreting these results, it is
important to note that we selected each of our 175 target characteristics from the existing liter-
ature [2, 12, 13, 28]—these were items for which we had strong reason to believe that stereo-
types might emerge. Indeed, for some items that are considered relatively central to defining
particular gender stereotypes, we found no effects whatsoever of gender (e.g., there were no
gendered effects on ratings of desirability for items like helping, wholesome, is a leader, bossy,
challenges authority, controlling, moody, friendly, good listener, competent or polite, all of which
are items that previous work has suggested may be gendered). These data highlight the impor-
tance of empirically testing the presence or absence of gendered stereotypes one-at-a-time (in
contrast to some previous work, which has clustered traits; see [25]).
While there was a sizeable subset of traits for which there was no evidence of gender stereo-
typing, the majority of traits did show some evidence of gendering (it is important to note that
many of these effects, while statistically significant, did not reach our pre-registered effect size
criteria and therefore are not reported in our main paper; they are available in our repository).
Together, our data strongly suggest that most characteristics were stereotyped and that gender
stereotypes change over development. Even given our stringent criteria, 43 characteristics
showed significant age by gender interactions for ratings of typicality, and 22 characteristics

showed significant age by gender interactions for ratings of desirability (We wish to note, of
course, that “desirability” is a complex construct and certainly not a construct that is likely to
be fully addressed via a single likert-scale question. We use this terminology in order to most
closely approach the ways in which previous work (e.g., Prentice & Carranza, 2002) has dis-
cussed prescriptive and proscriptive gender stereotypes.). These data highlight the importance
of taking a developmental approach to studying gender stereotypes. After all, our theories of
the development of gender stereotypes will necessarily differ depending on whether a particu-
lar stereotype persists throughout the lifespan, emerges only in adulthood, peaks at the onset
of puberty, or displays some other pattern.
Below, we discuss some of the more important developmental changes that we identified.
Future research should further explore the nature of and mechanisms underscoring these
changes. Additionally, we hope that other researchers will find our database immediately use-
ful in informing the development of new research materials. For example, researchers inter-
ested in backlash targeting young adolescents will likely wish to manipulate the gender
typicality of targets’ traits, but could not previously be certain about which traits are actually
viewed as gender stereotypic for this particular age group. Thus, our database now enables the
development of evidence-based stimulus materials conveying the gender (counter)stereotypi-
cality of targets across the developmental timespan.
As an important first step, we qualitatively and exploratorily classified the several develop-
mental patterns that emerged in our data. These classifications were driven by the shape of the
data and not by any theoretical expectations about which stereotypes might fall into each cate-
gory. Because these clusters were generated exploratorily and subjectively, we encourage future
researchers to use these primarily to motivate future confirmatory research and to generate
testable theories. Further, a visual inspection of our data suggests the possibility that some of
the developmental changes in gender stereotyping may be non-linear. The present study was
not designed to differentiate possible developmental trajectories and did not sample ages
densely enough to effectively do so (e.g., step-functions vs. logarithmic vs. quadratic vs. linear;
see [29] for review). Thus, we encourage researchers to explore our dataset, and to conduct fur-
ther research specifically aimed at detecting differences in the shape of change of gender ste-
reotyping across the lifespan. In addition, we describe some of the qualitative patterns that
emerged in our dataset below.
First, we note the presence of the Gender Differences Emerge Late category of stereotypes;
these can be found in Fig 1 and towards the bottom of Tables 6 and 7. These are items for
which we identified gender stereotypes in adulthood but found that these stereotypes were
minimal or absent for younger targets (e.g., ambitious, submissive). These items are important
because they shed light on the existing adult gender literature in that some of these items are
critical to existing theories of gender development.
The fact that there are any characteristics for which the direction of a significant perceived
gender gap switches throughout the lifespan (i.e., the Gender Difference Switches cluster) is a
particularly novel and surprising revelation. Additionally, it is noteworthy that some gender
stereotypes appear to be strongest in adolescence (i.e., the Adolescent Gender Differences—
Boost and Adolescent Gender Differences—Reduction clusters) or in childhood (the Childhood
Gender Differences cluster), or in only one age group (e.g., Gender Differences Fluctuate). We
have no theoretical account for these particular clusters at this moment and note that none of
the clusters cleave neatly along existing theoretical lines.
Notably, we found 20 stereotypes that apply even to 1-year-old children. Of importance,
from a purely developmental perspective, some of these characteristics could be difficult for
children in this age group to display. For example, our data revealed that 1-year-old boys
should be “athletic” and “love sports” and cannot “wear tutus” or “love pink.” It is unclear how

a 1-year-old boy (who may not yet be walking and is unlikely to be talking) could adequately
convey their athleticism and enthusiasm for sports, or their disdain for a color category they
likely have no cognitive appreciation for and an article of clothing they are unlikely to have
selected themselves. Similarly, 1-year-old girls should be “graceful” and “like princesses,” and
should not be “dirty” or “challenge authority.” One might reasonably expect that infants and
toddlers are too young to be constrained by these sorts of expectations, and that instead, adults
would simply focus on whether very young children are healthy and meeting appropriate
developmental milestones. Indeed, from this perspective, it is noteworthy that any characteris-
tics emerged as prescriptive and proscriptive for 1-year-olds. Certainly, the current work makes
the novel contribution of demonstrating that even infants appear to experience the effects of
gender stereotyping.
Our results also clearly suggest that the stereotypes that individuals are faced with change
over development. Of importance, existing theories of gender stereotypes were not created
and thus, are unlikely to be able to account for these changes. For example, both backlash the-
ory [30] and the Stereotype Content Model [23, 24] emphasize that adult men are expected to
exhibit agentic, competence-related traits while women are expected to display communal,
warmth-related traits. However, when examining the pre- and proscriptions, we uncovered
that for young children it is not apparent that warmth and competence are the primary stereo-
typic dimensions relevant for classifying children. Instead, consistent with our prior work
[13], young children’s pre- and proscriptions appear to be much more linked to appearance
(e.g., clothing choices) and overt, developmentally-relevant behaviors (e.g., play preferences).
This suggests that it will be important to expand the existing literature to think more broadly
about the nature, fluctuation, and impact of gender stereotypes throughout the lifespan. We
hope that future researchers will utilize our developmental data to hone their theories of and
predictions about the origins and time course of gender stereotypes.
While much of the adult literature has focused on stereotypes about women, our data show
several ways in which boys and men may experience negative gender stereotyping. First, we
found that the stereotypes that were considered typical of boys and men were also more often
rated as unfavorable (see also [13]); this was true across the developmental timespan studied.
Second, we found that across the timespan studied, there were more proscriptive stereotypes
for boys/men than for girls/women. These results build upon a growing body of work demon-
strating that gender stereotypes can have profound consequences for men as well as women
(for a discussion, see [4]). For example, men appear to encounter backlash when they violate
gender stereotypes by expressing interest in female gender-typed careers [5], behave modestly
on a job interview [6], or disclose their emotions [31]. Further, recent work has shown that
adults’ reactions to 3-year-old boys who violate gender stereotypes may be particularly harsh
relative to same-aged girls who violate gender stereotypes [13]. Taken together, these findings
suggest that future work should continue to consider the ways in which gender stereotyping
impacts perceptions of targets across the gender spectrum.
While the analyses reported here were pre-registered, we nevertheless consider them to be
exploratory: we didn’t have strong predictions about which stereotypes would persists across
development (e.g., we found that boys/men are more rowdy and competitive, girls/women are
more flatterable and caring), which peak in adolescence (e.g., girls cry more than boys; boys
have a bigger appetite than girls), which would show stereotype vacillations across the time-
span (e.g., boys/men are only sometimes more stingy than girls/women), and which would
show no substantial gender stereotypes at all (e.g., neither gender is more bratty, stubborn,
materialistic, rational, weak, or independent). While it may be tempting to believe that some
of the developmental patterns that we demonstrate are the result of noise in the data, we
believe it is unlikely that the patterns we see are false positives. First, our sample sizes are large:

each datapoint (e.g., the mean rating of typicality for intelligent for 3-year-olds boys) consists
of 100 ratings. While it is possible for noise to be (erroneously) treated as signal, we believe
that our high-powered design has likely revealed many provocative patterns of the develop-
ment of gender stereotypes that were undetected in prior studies. Second, we pre-registered
our data collection techniques and analyses and relied on measuring effect sizes (in addition to
null hypothesis significance testing), reducing the likelihood that the patterns in our data
emerged due to questionable research practices or because our design was overpowered. For
these reasons, we hope future researchers will take seriously both the predicted and surprising
developmental findings reported in our dataset.
We wish to note two major limitations of this study. First, we treated gender as a binary,
when we know that gender is actually a continuum (see [32] for review). Tellingingly, none of
our participants noted any concerns about our binarization of gender. While we do not believe
that a binarized view of gender is the right one, we do believe that the average adult in the
United States assumes it to be, and our participants were familiar with and able to discuss gen-
der in a binary way. To this point, we also note that we only sampled adults in the United
States. We have no reason to believe that these stereotypes generalize to other cultural contexts,
and indeed, this calls for additional cross-cultural research that can provide culturally-specific
information about the content of descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive gender stereotypes
across the lifespan.
In sum, we provide a novel and rich resource for future researchers cataloging the content
of gender stereotypes across the early developmental timespan. The current results highlight
the importance of expanding current theories of gender stereotyping to include developmental
perspectives. Simply put, current theories of gender stereotyping may be specific to one point
in development (i.e., adulthood). While this is useful for informing our understanding of the
ways in which gender stereotypes about adults impact perceptions of adults, additional work is
needed to shed light on the ways in which gender stereotypes shape and constrain social per-
ceptions and experiences across the lifespan. Our analyses suggest several fruitful specific
directions for new programs of research (e.g., focusing on the impacts of stereotyping on
infants and their caregivers; emphasizing research on boys; using developmental trajectories to
inform conceptual accounts of stereotyping), and we hope that researchers will use our dataset
as a resource to inform both their theoretical and empirical future work.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Jessica Sullivan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.
Data curation: Jessica Sullivan, Angela Ciociolo.
Formal analysis: Jessica Sullivan.
Investigation: Jessica Sullivan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.
Methodology: Jessica Sullivan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.
Project administration: Jessica Sullivan.
Resources: Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.
Software: Angela Ciociolo.
Supervision: Jessica Sullivan.
Validation: Jessica Sullivan.
Visualization: Jessica Sullivan, Angela Ciociolo.

Writing – original draft: Jessica Sullivan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.

Writing – review & editing: Jessica Sullivan, Angela Ciociolo, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.
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PLOS ONE

Establishing the content of gender

Published: July 12, 2022

Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the

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Materials and procedure

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Items that were not gender-stereotyped

Table 1. Characteristics showing no effect of gender in ratings of typicality.

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Table 2. Characteristics showing no effect of gender in ratings of desirability.

Stereotypes that were consistent across development

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Ratings of desirability (i.e., Prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes)

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Stereotypes that change over development

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Fig 1. Observed clusters and their patterns.

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Stereotypes at each age

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Table 8. Characteristics that were rated as descriptive of one-year-old children.

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Table 9. Characteristics that were rated as prescriptive/proscriptive of one-year-old children.

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Writing – original draft: Jessica Sullivan, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin.

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